Saturday, March 13, 2010

Posters

I've always loved posters, in particular posters of my favorite rock stars. Like every high school kid I had posters in my room. I wish I still had this wicked Jimi Hendrix poster I had back then. Back at the old apartment that I shared at different times with Chris and Wendell I covered my bedroom wall with rock and roll posters. My favorite poster was a promotional poster for the Butthole Surfers. It had a three-eyed puppy on it. By the way, the favorite rock t-shirt I ever owned was a Butthole Surfers t-shirt. It had a cartoon airplane with a smiley face dropping bombs on people. I loved it. I wore it to the dune climb back in 1999 and received a nice compliment on the shirt.

One thing that has always irked me about rock and roll posters is that almost every poster has the name of the band on the poster in large lettering. The poster I linked to just came in the mail today and I tacked it to the wall in my office a few minutes ago. I understand small lettering in the corner that informs you that a picture of a particular artist is copyrighted and yada yada yada. I can deal with that because it doesn't interfere with the picture. But really, if I go to the trouble of buying a poster don't they think I know who the hell it is in the picture? Is this poster going to be delivered to my front stoop three days after I order it and I'm going to forget what the Beatles look like? At least the lettering isn't like this poster. A minor quibble, sure, I may not know much about art but I know what I like.

That is why I snatched this Jimi Hendrix poster up right away when I first saw it at the website All Posters (a great website). Does anyone in the world not know who is the guitar player in this photograph? Do we need a subtitles? Hell no, it's Jimi and we know it. We need more rock posters like that one.

There is one exception to this, the promotional poster. This poster was produced to promote Neil Young's 1991 album, Weld. Naturally it will have the artist's name and the album's title on the poster. That's pretty cool because it has the same design as the album artwork. It's a complimentary piece. I guess whenever I commission a poster for myself I'll have to put my name on it because no one knows who in the hell I am. I already have have a design courtesy of this sumbitch so now all I need is an album and a tour.